Shari-Lea Hitchcock’s mental health hearing request denied

Socialite Shari-lea Hitchcock, who allegedly assaulted a woman and a police officer after lunching with friends, has had an application to have her case heard under a mental health clause rejected.

Lawyers for Ms Hitchcock, 47, claimed she had a “hypoglycaemic episode”, or a case of low blood sugar, that caused her to lash out following the lunch in Sydney’s eastern suburbs last year.

Shari-lea Hitchcock leaves Waverley Court on Monday.

At an initial hearing this year, her barrister Greg James, QC, requested the socialite’s case be heard under Section 32, a clause usually reserved for offenders suffering from a mental health disorder.

Mr James said she had eaten lunch but “hadn’t appeared to have eaten very much”, just two to three slices of a thin-based pizza, and drank “two glasses of alcohol”.

Shari-lea Hitchcock allegedly bit a police officer after a lunch out with friends last year.

She also skipped dinner the previous evening and passed on breakfast on the morning of the incident.

But in Waverley Local Court on Monday, magistrate Michael Barko refused the request.

“It does not appear to me that the accused was suffering from a mental health condition,” he said.

Ms Hitchcock was attended to by a passerby who saw her “stumbling in her high-heel boots” in the middle of Oxford Street on a busy Friday afternoon last year.

The good Samaritan, Jan Haswell, who tried to help Ms Hitchcock, was then allegedly attacked.

“I feel like I’m being punished. I saved her life, not once did she say sorry to me and I don’t live far from her,” Ms Haswell told Fairfax Media.

Police arrived and Ms Hitchcock was accused of putting up a “short struggle”, then biting and kicking a police officer before being taken to Rose Bay police station where, police allege, she refused a beverage and kicked and hit her cell door throughout her time in custody.

Ms Hitchcock, long-time mistress of the late cardboard king Richard Pratt, is facing charges of common assault, assaulting police and resisting arrest.